If you care about the diversity of the tech industry, then give Google some credit after it released Wednesday, for the first time, the demographics of its workforce.

Not so much for the numbers themselves, which illustrate how far the company has to go to create a truly diverse workforce, but for its willingness to shed light on the issue.

After I wrote a column on the issue of diversity and tech, Google gave me an advance look at the makeup of its workforce before releasing it publicly.

The statistics are detailed but easy to sum up: Google is still mostly a white male tribe, especially in tech jobs and leadership roles. Men make up 70 percent of its global workforce, and hold 83 percent of what it calls tech jobs. Whites are 60 percent of its U.S. workforce, and 72 percent of what it calls its "leadership" team.

The data had some gaps. While Google provided a gender breakdown of its global workforce, it did not provide the same breakdown for its U.S. workforce. At the same time, it provided a racial and ethnic breakdown of its U.S. workforce, but not for its global workforce. And Google did not release any figures for its Silicon Valley workers.

But the data it did release is sobering -- if any company could do well by these measures, it should be Google. Sixteen years old, the Mountain View-based company is a revenue-generating, hiring powerhouse that can draw the best talent worldwide, yet even it has been struggling to make its workforce more diverse.

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That said, the racial and gender makeup of Googlers isn't surprising given what we know about the tech workforce, the issues of bias, the education pipeline and the other factors that shape who gets hired by tech firms.

"When we look around at the industry, we think we're doing OK, but it's not something we want to tout," Nancy Lee, Google's director of people operations, said in an exclusive interview with this newspaper.

The company's disclosure is an attempt to shed light on a difficult issue that matters to Google's future, she said. "A broader range of backgrounds will produce a broader range of innovation." It also comes as tech companies face more pressure on the diversity of their workforces; the Rev. Jesse Jackson of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition was recently in Silicon Valley pressing Facebook, eBay and Google to be more forthcoming on the makeup of their workforces.

Google says it was planning to release the information before that visit, as part of an internal process that began about 18 months ago with an audit of its workforce's demographics.

Groups that work on diversity in the tech industry applauded Google's move. "They didn't have to release their data," said Freada Kapor Klein, co-chair of the Kapor Center for Social Impact, which focuses on women and minorities in tech. "It's a sign that a lot of forces are coming together and Google is going to take a leadership role on the diversity issue."

Google joins a small set of Silicon Valley companies that offer data about the gender, racial and ethnic breakdown of its workforce, a group that also includes Intel and Hewlett-Packard. It's an issue on the minds of younger firms as well. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, recently said her company hopes to share its workforce data internally first and then with the public.

Google did not provide historical data, so there's no way to know how these figures have changed over time. But I think one way to put the numbers in context is to compare Google's demographics to those of the tech industry.

At Google, Hispanics and African-Americans combined make up just 3 percent of the firm's technical workers in the U.S.

That's low compared with the industry at large, according to a 2010 Mercury News report based on Census Bureau data. Then, 5.3 percent of computer and math occupations nationwide were held by Hispanics and 7.1 percent by blacks. (One caveat: There are differences in what Google considered "technical" occupations compared with broader government categories, employment experts say.)

Asians make up 34 percent of Google's workforce nationally. That compares favorably with national numbers for tech jobs; Asians held 15.5 percent of those. But in Silicon Valley, 50.1 percent of tech workers are Asian.

Globally, female Google employees hold 17 percent of the tech jobs at the firm. That compares with the 20 to 23 percent norm at top technology firms, said Telle Whitney, chief executive and president of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.

"They are low, no question about it," she said.

And women hold 21 percent of the company's leadership roles. "They have a ways to go with women at the most senior level," Whitney said. However, women are 48 percent of its non-tech global workforce. And at Google, roughly 50 percent of the 47,700 jobs globally are non-tech, which includes sales and marketing jobs.

Google's disclosure comes after the company, along with other tech firms, resisted media efforts to get employment data released. Google, along with Apple, Yahoo, Oracle and Applied Materials, fought the Mercury News' efforts to obtain the data several years ago, arguing that the information could cause competitive harm.

OK, disclosure is great, but what is Google doing to improve the situation?

In recent years, the company has given "unconscious bias" training to more than 20,000 employees. It is also working on its recruiting efforts, broadening the number and kinds of colleges it visits.

A few small milestones: Of Google's technical hires in 2013, 19 percent were women, compared with 16 percent the previous year. And last year, Google's black workforce increased by more than 30 percent.

"We are not where we want to be as an industry," said Google's Lee. "Everyone uses technology, but we don't want people just to use it but also create with it."

Let's see if Google's disclosure prompts more companies to do the same.